


Borrowed Time

by Amicus_Cordis



Series: a garden full of plance [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst with a Cuddly Ending, Cuddling & Snuggling, F/M, could be queerplatonic or romantic, end of season 7, not a happy one though, plangst, too much contemplating death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-13
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-06-26 15:00:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15665580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amicus_Cordis/pseuds/Amicus_Cordis
Summary: There was a hitherto followed though unspoken rule of the paladins. No talking about mortality without injecting humor. Contemplating it seriously just made things difficult.





	Borrowed Time

Colleen breathed. She was outlined in a glow from the Garrison security lights that shone through the window. Pidge counted each breath. Tried to mimic the steady rise and fall.

It was quiet. Ambient noises of the infirmary, an occasional whine from the sleeping Bae Bae, but otherwise the room was silent. It was all she had wanted all day: she had not been blessed with a concussion as Hunk and Keith had, so as soon as she awoke she had people crowding her room with congratulations and gifts and politics she didn’t care about. They all wore uniforms and called her paladin and said they were glad she was alive, and she had to bite her tongue against saying, “So save the touching words for my funeral.”

But now it was one twenty-seven in the morning and the people were gone and somehow the room was even more unbearably loud.

Bae Bae shifted his head toward her when she pulled her feet out from under him, but did not rise when she slid off the bed. The cold floor drew her pet’s warmth from her feet quickly. She was shivering by the time she reached the door across the hall and a little to the left.

Knocking may have been appropriate, but it was still one something in the morning and if Lance was asleep then please let him sleep, give him a reprieve before the next day’s round of bullshit. But though Lance’s parents were asleep, huddled on the couch under the window, Lance himself was awake, wide and blank eyes focused on a sitcom that played with no sound or subtitles.

The opening door did not draw him, but Pidge entering the corner of his vision made him turn his head. His eyes softened, looking every bit as tired as she felt even as he sat up straight.

Pidge balanced on a foot as she rubbed at her calf with the other. “Were you conscious? While we were falling back to Earth?”

“Kind of.”

She rolled her lip between her teeth. “Does it feel like you’re still falling?”

The skin around his eyes crinkled, a new kind of exhaustion as his posture finally fell. “Kind of.” He held out his hand. Their hands slipped together and latched, just like they had when they had been separated from their lions in space. And just like in space, it didn’t feel like there was a ground, the only security the person they were clinging to.

Pidge could not really feel the cold, but she was still shivering. Lance scooted to the side and pulled the blankets back. Though nights seeking out each other’s company were too rare to form any kind of system, they always managed to find a comfortable place without speaking. Her arms around his neck, hands resting on his hair and hiding his face in her shoulder. His arms around her waist and back. She hooked one of her legs over his. As close to a sense of shelter as they could get outside the lions.

She drifted her fingernails over his scalp, monitored his breaths. They were steady, but never grew long as her mother’s had. His thumb rubbed in a semicircle on her back, rising and falling over her spine. “What happens when our close calls aren’t close calls anymore?”

“Well, we won’t be able to mull it over then, so why bother doing that now?”

“We’re both doing it anyway.”

There was a hitherto followed though unspoken rule of the paladins. No talking about mortality without injecting humor. Contemplating it seriously just made things  _difficult_ , and Pidge could feel the heat building behind her eyes and Lance trembling against her. He pulled her closer. “Just be there, okay?”

She tried to speak, but her throat was dry and choked and all she could manage was an unsteady breath. So she pressed her lips to his hair, then laid her head against his, and they held tighter.

**Author's Note:**

> Come shitpost with me on [Tumblr](https://amicuscordis.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
